


Pink

by friedgalaxies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, warning for brief mention of sexual harassment!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10521480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: They're dead and floating in bubbles, in places no one should find them but someone, inevitably, does. Pink makes her stomach turn. Pink makes her stomach turn in a new way, one she can't explain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to Cotton by The Mountain Goats as I wrote this, which I recommend you do as well!

She tried to be better, of course.

She tried to take out the piercings and abandon the slutty clothing, to wear her hair as she had when she was six sweeps and so young, so naive and fresh and full of life and love to give. She tried to make them she her as less of a threat, less vulgar and brash and rude. But playacting only gets you so far. 

She was hurt. The scars were proof enough. She had been hurt in the past and she was hurt now. The acid in her stomach revolted violently when she saw them walking together, hand in hand, laughing, his wings flittering the way they had when they were young and new to love. The way he tossed his head in laughter, careful with his horns. 

She was bitter. The bitemarks on her tongue were deep enough to resemble trenches where her flat, flat teeth had dug into the flesh. She tasted blood whenever she was around, with her flashy jewelry and snarky attitude and ability to make everyone like her in a way Damara had never been capable of. Something she envied, something she wanted. Something that made her claws dig deep into the heels of her hands and her steps pit-pat-patter just a little faster along in the simple, meek flats she had dug out from the back of her closet, tossing in the shiny red kitten heels in their place. One of the nicest things she owned. 

Now she was nice. Pretty in a meek way, a simple way, a non-threatening way. A way that would make them approach her again, instead of being wary. She didn’t speak. Didn’t throw any vulgar words in her native Eastern, didn’t stutter out any rude phrases in choppy Western Beforian, not the way she used to. Quiet girls were better, nicer, prettier. They liked her better when she was quiet. 

She didn’t say anything when Ampora slid his hand down her back, over the curve of her ass and teasing the hem of her skirt. Bit her tongue and felt the grooves with her teeth as he got close enough for his fins to brush her neck, the salty coolness of his breath vicious on her skin. Didn’t kick up dust as she paced away, didn’t let him be satisfied with making her uncomfortable. She didn’t talk. Didn’t say a word. 

There was a little corner of a dusty bubble, an old office someone had remembered but not bothered to do anything with. Simple chairs made of plastic and metal, littered around tables of fake wood with grainy decals peeling off at the corners. The green sun shone in in an orangey-blue-purple haze, hovering just above a horizon of red sand dunes. She wondered, if the green sun sank all the way down to the dunes, if it would turn the bubble into a plain of warped red glass. If she could skate across in her knee socks like when the lake would freeze below the lily pads and she made a game of maneuvering them without tripping, her lusus hovering on the shore, worriedly whipping a stark white tail back and forth as she slid and tripped and giggled, scraping her knees and standing back up again. 

The bubble was quiet and red and white and safe, no one there but her. She could sit and watch the window, feel her corneas burning as lime green flames licked the great ball of gas just hovering above the horizon. Watched short bursts of wind kick up and break the pattern of the dunes, whipping them into different shapes. Shapes she could trace with her eyes but never find an end to, a beginning or a middle or a break. The dunes connected together without an end, the winds wisely smoothing them into new patterns. Patterns to be turned into red glass when that green sun finally dropped and burst like a delicate ball of spun glass. 

The chairs squealed against the tiled floor and the silence broke. The bubble was empty now, save for the green sun and a thousand thoughts left trapped in desk drawers and on windowsills, beneath potted plants wilting to crisp, dry brown husks that reminded her so of his wings. Wings that sparkled and shone and fluttered like the way he had made her heart flutter. The way he had smiled and she cursed herself for not seeing another image reflected in too-white teeth, fangs that were just sharp enough to knick her lips with a kiss that went a little too far, making her taste rust red blood. 

The silence quivered around the earthy, sharp break of a potted plant smashing to the ground, hair sticking to her forehead in ebony swirls of ink, breath heavy. Another followed, a churned mass of sticky brown earth and fragile orange clay sprinkled with the papery remains of plants long dead spreading across the floor. Papers remembered on desks were thrown, fluttering like the wings of so many feathered lusii. Chairs were overturned and steel scraped against tile. Plastic cracked and glass shattered. Words and memories and thoughts and feelings swirled among the mess and the chaos like so many fruit flies following the bobbing path of the watermelon in her hands one sticky night, an unnervingly spectral shape following the bleary footsteps of its charge. 

Silence rang in her ears. It would be perfect when she came back the next night, of course. It always was. The plants in their places and the chairs unscratched and the windows unbroken, no shards of glass hanging like too-flat crystals in worn frames. 

Footsteps echoed and she turned, heart pumping faster than it ever had before. She was sure it would burst and leave her in a steadily growing pool of rust red blood on the imperfect floor, the dry, sticky earth from the potted plants soaking her up like the water they needed from so long ago. The door she left open in case her thoughts ever decided to flee the room, which they never had before, had a shadow fall across it. A human with too-pink skin littered with scars and a pair of bright pink eyes blinking up at her followed the shadow, a small pair of blue-clad feet worming over each other nervously on the doorstep. Pink. 

Pink made her mouth taste like chalk and all the times she knew Rufioh had been lying, the scratches he hid that weren’t from her, the bite to his lip as she blearily intersected with him at three in the morning as he attempted to slide back in next to her in the ‘coon. Pink made her hands clench and her teeth find the grooves in her tongue. Pink made her want to scream and cry at the same time. She didn’t look at her hands, because she knew she would see splatters of pink on them. Bruises covered with dark fuschia, her claws broken, just like three of her teeth. Her wrist hanging at a funny angle and the muscles in her legs twinging in pain as though someone had mistaken them for the chords of a violin whenever she walked. She didn’t close her eyes, because pink would be waiting there, too. Pink. 

Pink blinking up at her, tilting a head with bouncy golden curls littered with strands of pink. Pink and gold. Lips painted black pressed together, opening once, twice, three times, before words came out. Pink and gold and black. 

“Well, that was, uh, not quite what I expected to be greeted with, yeah?” Pink laughed nervously. Pink and gold worried black between white teeth. Pink and black scratched gold and twisted a lock between short, round fingers, lacking the claws that dug into callouses on Damara’s hands. 

“Not much of a talker, then?” Pink nodded. Pink and gold and black peered around her, looking at the mess she had made on the floor. A mess that hadn’t been remembered and would be gone by the time she returned. A mess that would be made perfect again as soon as she left. 

Did no one remember he? Quiet, demure, her? When they were young and laughing and loving, hands clasped tightly together without the intent of claws sinking into tender flesh. Teeth that glinted in the light without stains of blue and red and pink and black, without stains of violet and purple and green and orange. Eyes that squinted with lines of laughter at the corners, not with tears in thick black lashes and dust in the corners. Maybe she couldn’t be fixed because no one remembered the good her. The her that everyone liked. The her that could rest her head on Rufioh’s shoulder and the only thing she had to worry about was their horns knocking together. The her that could hug Meulin without fear oozing from every pore underneath that great, frumpy green sweater, without black flat clad feet tapping nervously and a robotic blue tail swishing. The her that could pass by Kurloz without a brown bag being passed from gloved hands to ones with claws lacquered red, crinkling between her thin fingers, anticipation rising in her gut. 

That her was a distant memory that couldn’t be replaced with a poor copy of her old outfit, the one that was more white than red, the one that didn’t start at her cleavage and end right below her skimpy lace panties. That her couldn’t be remembered. That her couldn’t be replaced. 

Pink was still looking at her nervously, awaiting a response that would never be returned. Green glinted off gold and black was worried away. 

“Hey- wait, hey, are you okay?” Pink stretched out hands to reach and wipe away hot red tears on pale grey cheeks, sunken deep, eyes ringed with deep grey that couldn’t be covered with makeup. Makeup that she didn’t wear, not back then, not when she was the good her. Rosy cheeks instead of sharp cheekbones, big, doe eyes instead of thin white slits sharpened by lines of black, soft, pink tinted lips instead of grinning red ones with a cigarette hanging between them, smoked nearly down to the orange band grasp between blunt, flat teeth. 

She shrunk back, soft hands wrapped in blue retracting, clasped at a chest swathed in the same blue. Hands gentler than she had felt in forever. Hands gentler than any he had ever had, gentler than cold and hot ones tracing the flat contours of her body. Ones of all different temperatures with all different colors pumping beneath grey skin. None of those had been as gentle as the ones she had felt ghost across her cheeks for just a moment. Just a millisecond. Not even long enough for a flaming green ball of gas to turn a desert into smooth red glass, littered with sharp waves and twisting pathways. 

Naked lips pursed together and threatened to open, but were cinched shut by teeth grabbing them from the inside, almost as greedily as he had taken bits of her, piece by piece, bit by bit, her red, red heart and her black, black spade. 

“Sorry. I know it’s a little, well, a lot-lle unnerving to have a stranger touch your face!” Pink scratched gold again. Blue hooked over blue and pointed at the door with a soft, pink lacquered thumb. “I-I should go. Got more bubbles to explore, after all.” 

Pink and blue and black and gold were gone before she had the chance to reach out, to eek out a word that would have been grabbed greedily by blunt teeth, choked back into her stomach that churned with the vision of pink in a new way. A good way? She didn’t know. 

She would try to be better. She would be better. She had pink to find, pink to touch and hold and grate out words in a choppy language no one understood but her. But the two of them. 

Pink.


End file.
